


Safe

by respoftw



Series: Tumblr Prompts - McShep edition [20]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Healing, Hurt Rodney, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 08:30:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10895553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/pseuds/respoftw
Summary: John has always made Rodney feel safe.  Even now, with John's face flecked with dots of red, dots of red that Rodney knew to be his own blood, Rodney knew that it would all somehow be ok.





	Safe

John Sheppard had incited a lot of feelings in Rodney since that first meeting. Infuriation, certainly; Frustration, definitely; Infatuation?..well, maybe a little. There was one feeling though that John inspired over and above all of those. It wasn't something Rodney ever expected, especially not while he was living in a galaxy as fear inducing and unknown as Pegasus, but the fact remained that, no matter what the galaxy threw at them, all Rodney had to do was look into John's eyes - a different shade of brown, green or gold every time - and he knew that everything was going to be ok.

Loyalty, trust, whatever you wanted to call it, it all boiled down to the same thing: John made Rodney feel safe.

Even now, with John's face flecked with dots of red, dots of red that Rodney knew to be his own blood, Rodney knew that it would all somehow be ok.

He opened his mouth to try and tell John that, to ease the pain and worry on his face, but the words didn't come, a wet cough resulting in more dots of red on John's face sounding instead.

"Don't," John's voice choked on the plea as he cupped Rodney's cheek with his hand. "Just, please Rodney, let me.."

John’s grip on Rodney’s face was hindered by the fact that his hands were shaking badly and Rodney ignored his earlier plea to not talk in an effort to soothe him.

“John,” he managed to spit out between his teeth, “s’ok. M’alright.”

“No, Rodney,” John shook his head, “it’s not OK. But it will be. It will be, buddy.”

An unexpected warmth started to flow into Rodney, entering his body from the source of John’s touch and quickly filling every pore, every inch of him with a warm, golden heat that matched the warm, golden glow of John’s eyes.

Rodney reached his hand out towards those glowing eyes, wanting to know if they were the source of the heat but the movement resulted in something cracking unpleasantly in his chest, a rush of cold coming behind the sound, threatening to overtake the pleasing warmth that John was pouring into him.

John’s eyes grew fierce, the golden hue darkening as he tightened his grip on Rodney. “Don’t you even think about it, McKay,” he warned.

Rodney didn’t know what John was talking about. Thinking about anything other than the warring sensations of warm and cold was beyond him right now. If he could think, he might have turned his mind to the unfairness of it all, to the fact that he’d never plucked up the courage to tell John just how safe he made Rodney feel, just how infuriating, how frustrating, how wonderful he was. He didn’t have room for any of that though, it was all he could do to keep his eyes from closing. Rodney didn’t want to close his eyes, he didn’t want the golden glow to go away but as the warmth pouring into him started to wane he found it harder and harder to manage. The last thing he heard before the gold disappeared was a desperate, whispered ‘please’’.

* * *

One frantic puddlejumper trip, one emergency surgery, and ten days of a medically induced coma later, Carson smiled down at Rodney and told him that he must have some kind of guardian angel out there.

Rodney only half listened to him prattle on about chest wounds that should have had him bleeding out in seconds and arterial damage that was much less pervasive than they had feared. He listened enough to nod in the right places, to accept the sip of water that Carson held out for him and assure himself that he was no longer in any danger. Miraculously so, apparently. The other half of Rodney was trying to make sense of what happened. He had felt that bullet rip through him as if he were one of the marine’s paper targets. He had felt the blood rushing out of him with each pump of his heart, had saw...he didn’t know what he’d seen. Something impossible. Something...something that he couldn’t explain. Or could he?

Rodney came to the realisation that Carson was right. Or half right, anyway. Rodney had someone, or something, looking out for him. But whatever John was, he wasn’t an angel.

* * *

“What are you?”

John half rose from his seated position on the bed when Rodney barged into his room, his golf magazine lying forgotten on the bedspread.

“Rodney,” he drawled cautiously, “aren’t you supposed to be in the infirmary?”

“Don’t Rodney me, don’t you…” Rodney ran his fingers through his hair, already dishevelled from almost two weeks in bed, not caring that he was messing it up even worse. “What are you?” he demanded again. “You’re not human. You can’t be. Humans don’t glow like you did back on that planet, humans can’t stop someone who was shot in the heart from bleeding out like you somehow managed to do, Colonel. So, I’m going to ask again: What. Are. You.?”

Rodney saw the brief moment when John considered bluffing his way out of this flit across his face, no doubt planning on blaming the entire thing on Rodney’s blood loss. That moment passed, rejected, obvious in the slump of John’s shoulders, in the way he collapsed back onto the bed with a heavy sigh and an expression like he was facing a firing squad.

Rodney refused to feel sorry for him, pushing the rush of sympathy away. John had lied to him, goddamnit. He’d made him believe that he was human, that he was someone that Rodney could count on, someone Rodney could trust. Wasn’t that a joke? How could he trust someone that had lied to him every day they’d known each other? Was he even Rodney’s friend? Was that even true?

Rodney collapsed onto an empty chair, the anger dissipating to leave behind hurt. “Is your name even John?” he asked weakly.

“Yes.” John seemed relieved to have an easier question to answer. “Of course my name is John. I didn’t...Rodney, I never lied to you.”

Rodney huffed indignantly but John’s voice grew stronger, surer of himself.

“No, that’s not fair,” he said. “I might not have told you everything about myself but what I did tell you, every word of it was true.” John was standing up now, moving around the room, pacing, trying to find the words.

After a full minute, Rodney grew impatient. “Preferably before Carson finds out that I’m AWOL, Colonel? Let me help you out. You’re an Ancient. This entire time, you’ve been hiding from us, watching us, watching me try to make sense of this city, of this technology, and - - “

John broke into Rodney’s accusations with his donkey bray of a laugh. “I’m not an Ancient,” he said. “I..look, Rodney, this is hard for me. I’ve never - - nobody except my mother knows this. Just...give me a minute to figure out how to tell you this, would you?”

Rodney leant back in the chair, careful not to pull his stitches, and waited as patiently as he could manage.

“I’m human,” John eventually said. At Rodney’s scoff, he bobbed his head in acceptance. “Ok, maybe not 100% but my father is. That makes me half human.”

John seemed to really need Rodney to believe him in this, the need for Rodney’s understanding clear in the line of his body, the punch of his words. Rodney nodded, accepting John’s words for the truth. Even now, he trusted John more than the situation warranted.

“Your mother?” Rodney asked.

John swallowed a knot in his throat and told the truth. “A fae.” Those two words seemed to release something in him and Rodney watched, bewildered, as John sank onto the floor, chuckling at nothing.

“A fae? You’re telling me, what, that you’re a fairy?”

John stopped chuckling, looking Rodney in the eye for the first time since he’d demanded to know what John was. “I’m pretty sure that I’m not allowed to tell you that under military regs. But, yeah. In both senses of the word.”

“In both…” Rodney took a moment to process but eventually landed on one burning, hurtful question. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

John huffed a laugh. “It’s not exactly getting to know you small talk. ‘Hey, I’m John Sheppard. I like college football, Ferris wheels, anything that goes faster than 200 miles per hour, oh and by the way, I’m half fae and have moderate healing and glamour abilities. What’s your name?’”

Rodney shook his head. “Not that. Why didn’t you tell me that you were - -”

“Rodney,” John pushed up to his knees and shuffled towards him until he was kneeling on the floor next to Rodney’s chair, his hands on Rodney’s thighs. “They’d kick me out if they found out. I can’t risk that. I can’t risk not being here to - to - “

“To save my life.” Rodney finished John’s sentence. “Just how often have you done that?”

John shrugged, his mouth twitched up into a smile. “Actually saved your life? Just that once.”

“But you’ve healed me before,” Rodney knew it with certainty. “All those injuries that should have been more serious, the energy cloud, the Wraith stunner, the head injury after the jumper crash. You made them all better. Why?”

John looked at him sadly. “You’re a genius, Rodney. You know why.”

Rodney did know, couldn’t believe that he’d been so blind for so long. Shaking his head, he reached out to trace the point of John’s left ear with his fingers. “It’s good to know that there’s a reason for these at least.”

John’s eyes twinkled as he smiled. “So, you don’t mind them then?”

Rodney’s eyes moved from John’s ears to meet his eyes. They weren’t glowing gold right now but they were still the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. He answered the only way he could. With the truth.

“I love them.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I do accept prompts on my tumblr (buffycuddlespigs) but I'm very, very slow at filling them. Sorry! This was for the following Anon prompt:
> 
> I've just seen the John Sheppard picture (with his pointed ears) and I have a prompt for you: Rodney sometimes wondered about John's ears but he always thought it's just a /whim of nature/. But then he gets shot and John, who's half-fairy, heals him with a spell. And now John has a lot to explain :D


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